War, Terrorism, and Spectacle : On Towers and Caves

War and terrorism have traditionally been associated with one another, but to link them both to spectacle constitutes a relatively new phenomenon and strikes me then as a distinctively contemporary topic. To link does not, of course, mean to identify: it does not suggest that war, terrorism, and spectacle are the same. Yet it implies that there is a necessary relationship between them, and that much is new. But it is new in a very specific way. For although war has traditionally been associated with pageantry, parades, intimidation, and demonstrations of all kinds, never before perhaps has what I would call "theatricalization" played such an integral role in the strategic planning itself.

Of course, such a linkage was not selected out of a vacuum. The destruction of the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon on September 11 has resulted in what the American president Bush has declared to be a "War against Terrorism." And the "theater of operations" in and on which this "war" is being fought encompasses not just Afghanistan, but also the media of the world: in the United States, Europe, but also in Qatar and throughout the world.

It is often said that the attacks of September 11 changed everything. It certainly changed the perceptions of those living in the United States who were convinced that "it can't happen here": namely, that organized, mass destruction was something that was exclusively limited to the nightly news. The bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, of course, marked a first breach in this widely held belief. Yet it could still be regarded as the exception that confirms the rule. That rule, however, collapsed altogether with the imploding towers on September 11.

One should be as precise as possible here. American society and its media have long been obsessed with violence: the massacres at Columbine High School, or the Branch Davidians in Waco, are just two recent instances of this preoccupation. But violence in the United States has generally been portrayed, if not always perpetrated, as a private affair, done either by desperate or deranged individuals, or against desperate or deranged individuals. Violence tends to be individualized or, better, privatized, as with the Mafia and "organized crime," and thus understood as an extension of individuals, of the family, or of private groups. This is the violence that is demonstrated from morning to evening on the broadcast media, from the reports of mayhem on the highways that accompany the morning news (at least in Los Angeles!) to the incessant series of murders and killings that make up the not-so-new "nightly news." For decades, "security" has thus been a long-standing concern both of individuals and of the American nation. ¹

What is new is the growing efficacy of an organized violence that is no longer simply private or individual, no longer simply "criminal" but rather "terrorist," in that its goal is to disrupt and destroy the very fabric of society as a whole.

Of course, this too is not absolutely new, far from it. Although for a general public whose collective memory these days seems measured in months rather than in years, much less decades or centuries, and which is shrinking rapidly all the time—for this public, organized violence that attempts to challenge the prevailing social order as a whole, appears to be an entirely new and unprecedented phenomenon.

Such a perception fits very nicely with the War against Terrorism, which was the response of the U.S. government to the attacks of September 11. Its response follows an established pattern. This is not the first such "war" declared by American governments. Following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson declared a War against Poverty, while pursuing the less metaphorical war in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. Succeeding presidents declared the War against Drugs. Now, we have the War against Terrorism. As commonly understood...